The present invention relates to a transport container that is independent or mounted on a vehicle such as a truck, a trailer, a railway car, etc. of which at least one side wall is provided with sliding curtains.
There is known, for example in trucks and trailers of great length, a system of sliding side walls, comprising a plurality of. curtain walls or tarpaulins mounted on upper rollers, whose horizontal tension is ensured by snaps on the front or rear surface and the vertical tension by straps disposed at distances of the order of 600 or 700 mm. Such a system offers the advantage of total rapid opening, of being light and being low cost. It however suffers from serious drawbacks.
In particular, it requires three or four intermediate posts to support the upper rail which permits ensuring that the tarpaulin will have a good vertical tension. Moreover, the vehicle must be provided with internal protection to prevent the merchandise from falling on the curtains, these protections being provided by side panels in the lower portion and/or horizontal blinds of aluminum or wood which prevent access to the interior of the vehicle and require being disassembled.
The handling of the sliding side walls is moreover long and complicated, requiring hooking and unhooking numerous straps as well as remounting and unmounting the internal protections.
A major drawback of tarpaulin side walls is their low resistance to breaking and entering, which can take place simply by cutting the curtain by means of a cutter. The mounting of accessories, such as hooking bars or a padding, is difficult.
Among other drawbacks, can also be noted the projection widthwise of the vehicle, of the vertical tensioning straps, which increases the overall width of the vehicle and moreover gives rise to great difficulty of washing in roller washing stations.
There is moreover known, from GB-A-2.267.108, a system of sliding curtains for lateral openings of vehicles, in which a curtain is suspended from upper rollers carried by plates that are themselves secured to vertical metal strips, as in the prior art. However, instead of fixing the curtain to the lower part by hooks, this document provides the lower part of the curtain with rollers coacting with a lower rail. The system described in this document however does not permit solving the problems set forth above. An analogous solution is described in EP-A-0.131.706.
GB-A-2.174.136 discloses a system according to the described state of the art, but in which the lower portion of the curtain is provided with a flexible reinforcement plate fixed on sliding posts which themselves carry the curtain.
If this system provides partial solution to the problem of breaking in, the other problems that arise are not solved.
FR-A-2.313.531 discloses a system of tarpaulins constituted by arches sliding at their lower portion in roller tracks, by means of mechanical drive, the tarpaulin being carried by said arches. This tarpaulin system provides no satisfactory solution to all of the problems set forth above.
The same is true of U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,388, which discloses a flexible wall mounted on a metallic curtain with crossbars, the wall comprising pockets permitting absorbing bending deformations.
DE 29608103, which discloses a classic folding curtain system provided with reinforcement plates, permits only improving the resistance to breaking in, without solving the other problems that arise.
The present invention accordingly seeks to provide a new system of closure for sliding curtains, but does not have the drawbacks of the known systems.
To this end, the invention has for its object a transport container, independent or fixed on a vehicle such as a truck, a trailer or a railway car, of the type comprising a horizontal loading surface of generally rectangular shape of which at least one side surface is provided with tarpaulin side walls mounted longitudinally slidably on an upper rail, characterized in that said tarpaulin walls are hung from an assembly of foldable rigid louvers in accordian form, the upper end of said louvers sliding on an upper rail by means of carriages with casters while the lower end slides on a lower rail, carrying the upper rail, by means of lower carriages with rollers.
The inventive idea which is the basis of the present invention consists in closing the openings of the container by assemblies of accordian foldable rigid louvers on which are hung tarpaulin walls.
The rigid louvers can be metallic, of wood, of synthetic material, of composites, etc.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, the louvers are assembled pairwise, two louvers pivoting respectively on an upper articulation member and on a lower articulation member.
Preferably, in each pair of louvers, the upper edges of each louver are inclined convergently downwardly, which permits receiving the folds of the tarpaulin. To facilitate this folding, the invention also provides that the upper edge of the louver is provided with a sealing bib or a folded edge, such that the folding is forced downwardly.
Preferably, at least some of the louvers are provided with holes, preferably in the form of locking holes, which lighten the assembly and permit the mounting of accessories such as suspension rods, padding, etc.